KABUL, Feb 27,1998 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban Islamic authorities
gave a woman 100 lashes for adultery and amputated the right hands of two
men for theft in Kabul on Friday as thousands of looked on.

A Taleban speaker read out the verdicts of a religious court, saying
that Sohaila, a single woman from Kabul, had admitted adultery.

He said the two men -- Hamidullah of Paktiya province and Habibullah
from Kapisa province -- had confessed their sins without any pressure.

The sentences were carried out in Kabul's sports stadium, where more
than 20,000 residents of the war-shattered capital gathered to watch.

Sohaila was brought to the stadium in a car accompanied by two other
women wearing the all-enveloping Burqa veil. A Taleban fighter lashed Sohaila
100 times with a roughly one-metre (three foot three inch) whip as a speaker
chanted Islamic slogans.

``Thanks to the Taleban, the army of God, that we can protect the honour
of people,'' the speaker said.

``Thanks to God that we are followers of God not of the West,'' he said.

According to Islamic law enforced by the Taleban, an unmarried adulterer
should be flogged 100 times, but a married adulterer should be stoned to
death.

``Certainly as a result of these punishments, the extent of crime will
reduce in Kabul,'' said the Taleban governor in Kabul, Abdul Manan Niyazi.

Sohaila walked away in no apparent pain or injury after the lashing
that was administered relatively lightly.

Taleban officials said that the man who had illegal sex with Sohaila
had escaped arrest.

``This was only to expose her and humiliate her in public and it gave
no pain,'' Niyazi said of the flogging.

The two men, convicted of stealing goods worth 19 million afghanis ($500)
from a Kabul shop, were brought in a Japanese pick-up truck and were anaesthetised
before their right hands were cut off from the wrist with a sharp lance.

Three doctors from the Public Health Ministry, who had covered their
faces, carried out the amputation after the convicts became unconscious
and lay on the damp ground.

A Taleban fighter carried one amputated hand around and said: ``Anyone
committing theft or adultery will face such punishment. Look at this, it
is the hand of one of the thieves.''

Friday's was the second public amputation of thieves' hands in Kabul
in a week. Last Friday, the Taleban chose a school as the venue for the
punishment.

On Wednesday, the Taleban ordered the execution of three men for sodomy
in the southern town of Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. They were ordered
to be buried alive under a pile of stones and a wall was pushed on top
of them by a tank.

Their lives were to be spared if they survived for 30 minutes and were
still alive when the stones were removed.

More punishments would be carried out in public, Niyazi said.

The Taleban, who seized control of Kabul in 1996, have enforced strict
Islamic code in the more than two-thirds of Afghanistan it controls and
have cracked down on crime.

The Taleban administration, whose attitude towards human rights has
come under sharp criticism in the West, is recognised only by three countries
-- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.